GFTU BGCM 2017

Zoe Konstantopoulou

denied they had copies of the files that showed this. The problem here was not about the freedom of information but the lack of institutionalised transparency. For example the statute of limitation for criminal cases 20-25 years for a citizen however for a government official it’s the 2nd regular term after they have left office (which cant be less than 4 months but could be as little as 1.5 years) meaning hundreds of files are submitted to parliament every 2 years with no procedure to look at them leading to institutional immunity for government officials! So why did this happen? In short the private bond holders were rescued (especially banks) and not Greece. The rescue package of 2010 (first loan) was to offer a safe emergency exit to private bond holders. The report highlights that the IMF are liable for what happened to Greece and although the preliminary report was sent out to all members of the EU no one put it to any use! In 2015 Greece took another loan of 85 billion Euros in addition to the 325 billion Euros they received before. They are now in 410 billion Euros in debt. In context, that means that every baby born will owe 41,000 Euros when they are born!! Extreme austerity measures have cut pensions to 44.4% below the poverty line. The Social Security Bill means that self-employed professionals will be paying 80/90% in taxes and fees and going forward pensions will drop to a flat rate of 384 Euros for everyone which is reckless and dangerous at best when the poverty line sits at 780 euros!!! Zoe was removed from being speaker of Parliament as she and 40 other SYRIZA MPs voted against the measures and the group have been bullied and harassed since! The other MPs backed down and chose themselves over their constituents which led them to stay in power. Zoe told us for a normal person serving a position of power is like serving a prison sentence. Those still there now are in charge of privatising what’s left of Greece’s services for example Pireaus Port. The minister of maritime policy was seen as the left of the left of SYRIZA but he is now tendering for the sale of the port. By having a left wing government do the EU’s dirty work it’s showing the country there is no alternative which has helped in the disillusion of the people of Greece who saw SYRIZA as a beacon of hope that completely u-turned and betrayed them. They do not understand what has gone on behind the scenes to cause it. Zoe told us Greece is not the first country to be blackmailed by the European Central Bank; In Cyprus March 2013 they closed the banks and within 10 days had changed the Parliamentary vote. In Greece they closed the banks and blackmailed the government. In her opinion France and Germany are trying to pull away from the Treaties for their own gain. She said what was happening to Greece was not a fatality but if there had been more people ready to fight things would be different now – something other countries need to be prepared for!

Zoe is a human rights lawyer and politician of the political party Syriza being elected as an MP in 2012 and 2015. She was formally the speaker of the Hellenic Parliament. From the outset it was apparent that Zoe wanted us to have an accurate and clear view of what was happening in Greece as she was well aware that what is reported in our press is not an accurate picture of what is and has been going on. Corruption and Transparency Before she was elected as the speaker for the parliament her role was in “Corruption and Transparency”. Her main aim was to audit the debt crisis to get the truth about what had occurred. A committee was then formed in April after she became the speaker and had the power to deal with it by gaining proper access to the debt books of Greece. The committee consisted of representatives from several different countries and an expert from the UN on Debt and Human Rights. It was not an easy process people thought that as they had voted Zoe in they would get leniency on corruption but it wasn’t the case and Zoe had a very turbulent and difficult 6 months trying to collect evidence for the committee. They found it particularly difficult to get feedback from the Greek banks, they were reluctant to give figures and invoked the banking secrecy clause rather than give up any information! Preliminary Report: The Truth Committee on Public Debt After a 4 month period of negotiating, a preliminary report was published in June 2015. There was an aspiration to look into the rest of the auditing and show exactly how the debt was created ( Doug has a copy) Conclusion 1 Essentially they disproved the public myth that Greece got their point of crisis by living beyond its means. The investigation showed that actually public spending was below average in Europe, defence spending however was over the European average. Here they see the most corruption – tanks without bullets, submarines without torpedoes and defective armour - high profit for corrupt officials but useless to the state Conclusion 2 Since 2010 the IMF had knowledge that the Greek debt was unsustainable. With this knowledge they should not have been able to lend and so that is why they concealed the fact that they knew. They

Photos courtesy of Bindu Paul and Sarah Woolley

Report on the Study Visit to Greece | Page 37